Skipping school for the day can't hurt, can it? [aVeryHotApplePie]

Hi, I'm TheDespaxas. You probably know me from my branch or announcing other branches... Here's a new one from aVeryHotApplePie, and for once it doesn't start off my branch but off Funatic's. As usual, things might be slightly different from other branches in the way things work, but what we have here is a very promising start and I can't wait to read the rest. So, good reading everyone!

John woke up the next morning with another popup floating above him.

New quest: Level up!
Level up by the end of the day (8:00 pm)
Reward: 3 extra stat points to spend.

Looking at his current exp, he was at 17. The next level required 700. Theoretically, he could create another Instant Dungeon and stomp on some more Seedlings. He’d be raising Endurance that way too, but the Seedlings themselves only gave 1-3 exp a piece. It was neither exciting nor efficient. But he wanted to level up by the end of the day, so he’d have to figure out another way.

John rubbed the back of his head as he accepted the quest. It wasn’t like the dev needed to give him more incentive to level up. Based on what Moira had told him, the developer of this ‘game’ was most likely Gaia. John had no clue what he’d done to earn her favour, but he didn’t plan on losing it anytime soon.

Achievement Unlocked: A good idea
That’s a good plan. Stick to it, buddy.
+1 Wisdom

“Wow, you spoil me,” John laughed at the snarky message.

How quickly he had come to accept his circumstances had surprised even John. The normal reaction would probably have been to panic, but John felt strangely calm, nay excited. But there was a lot he still didn’t understand, which meant there was a lot to learn. Well, he had a character menu - maybe he could learn something from it?

Opening it presented him with the basic character stats of his person. He had already discovered that clicking on key words opened up further explanations, but he only now noticed the 'options' tab on the top right of the screen. A flicker of curiosity was immediately quashed by the lack of 'options' in the options menu.

Standard settings such as 'sound' and 'brightness’ were absent for reasons John could understand. But strangely, 'resolution' was available. A brief spell of insanity caused him to drop it to 360p. His vision blacked for a moment while the resolution switched over, and when it returned, he was treated to the sight of a pixelated mess that was now real life. In the span of a breath, he'd switched back to the highest setting and sighed in relief as normality was restored. It had to be some sort of prank by Gaia; no one in their right mind would want to see the world in pixels.

Aside from resolution, there was also a notifications setting. John immediately set it so that an icon would appear for any new notifications in the bottom left of his vision, rather than the message appearing straight away in his FOV.

Lastly, there was UI, which gave him the ability to reconfigure his stat sheets, as well as change the colour scheme, etc. John fiddled around with it for a bit, noting a few different colour options, but ultimately, he settled on a stylish black and gold interface.

Unfortunately, a change in U.I didn't yield much in the way of helpful information. 'To the internet then!' John thought, moving from his bedside to his desktop to wake his computer up. Of course, the first word he typed into his browser was Abyss. Half an hour of internet research later, nothing of relevance had turned up. Moira had mentioned that the Earth and the Abyss were deliberately kept separate, but there were clearly people connected to both, so surely he should have found something by now.

His frustrations were interrupted by a knock on the door. “John,” his mother called. “You’re going to be late for school.”

Oh right. School was still a thing.

“Okay, mom,” John replied. “I’ll be going soon.”

Despite what he said, John had no real intention of attending today. There were much more pressing issues to deal with, namely levelling up before the end of the day. After getting dressed and grabbing a quick bite to eat, John made his way towards the door when a thought occurred to him.

“Mom, I’ve just got to get something out of the garage,” he called to her.

“Okay, honey, but be quick, or you really are going to be late!”

Not really in a rush, but nonetheless hurrying, John stepped into the garage and began rummaging around the stacked boxes and furniture on the far wall. Finally, he found what he was looking for.

Baseball Bat
Class: Blunt Weapon
Damage: 10(+8)
Durability: 78/100
Your average baseball bat made from ash. Nothing remarkable but could be used as a weapon. Scales with Strength.

‘This’ll do,’ John thought. Yeah, he’d decided to take advantage of his high Intellect and Wisdom to become a mage, but he ran out of mana quickly. It wouldn’t hurt to have a backup weapon. John stored the bat in his inventory and hurried outside, walking in the direction of school.

John swung into the first alley he came across and immediately an achievement popped up.

Too Cool for School
You’re deliberately skipping the entire day of school for the first time in your life. Aren’t you a bad boy? I’m sure the ladies will love you.
+1 Charisma

John had a feeling the sass was going to get old fairly quickly, as he closed the notification and opened his skill sheet.

Create Instant Dungeon - Lvl 1
Create a Protected Space. May or may not be filled with monsters, depending on the creator’s wishes. 5 MP

Below the description was a list of monsters he could add. At skill level 1, he had a choice between rats, goblins, and ghosts.

Without hesitation, he clicked on rats. They were pretty much the lowest level enemy in any RPG, and John didn’t feel like he was ready for goblins or ghosts. The world around him distorted for a moment, before he reappeared in a near identical alley. He did a quick 360 to check that his immediate surroundings were safe, before looking out onto the street.

The I.D. had replicated the neighbourhood quite well, but instead of the usual morning traffic, the streets were populated by large rats. He cast Observe on the closest one.

Street Rat (Lvl 3)
HP: 25/25

He did the same for several others. The level range seemed to be 2-5 which suited John perfectly. After taking out his bat, John stepped onto the street. He aimed his left hand towards the closest rat, preparing to fire the Mana Power Attack that Moira had shown him. The attack had no charge up and fired as soon as he was ready. The dartlike mana attack struck the rat square in the body annihilating the entirety of its HP bar.

+12 xp

At the same time as his exp bar increased, another achievement appeared in his vision.

Achievement Unlocked: One shot, one kill
You killed an enemy with one shot from a ranged attack. It’d be more impressive if it was anything but a rat.
+200 xp

“Huh,” John let out as he closed the window to check on the skill he’d just used. It scaled with intelligence, of course. Judging by the damage it scaled at a rate of 1:1. Fantastic news as it meant that any rat at or below level 4 would die in one hit

New Quest: Pest Control
Exterminate 30 rats in the area. 1/30
Bonus objective: kill the Broodmother. 0/1
Reward: 300 xp
Bonus Reward: $100 and 1 skill evolution point.
Time To Complete: 1:00.00

Of course John clicked accept. While he didn’t know what it did, a skill evolution point sounded pretty useful. He was about to find the next rat when he noticed something on the ground.

Rat Teeth
Mundane Alchemy Ingredient
The front teeth of an abnormally large rat.

“So there’s item drops too, I guess,” John said as he inventoried the teeth. “Well, time to clear the dungeon.”

The extermination went fairly smoothly… until he ran out of mana. Which was after only 5 rats. His mana basically regenerated at 1 point every minute which meant he wouldn’t even fully regenerate before the hour was up. This left John with no other option than to use the baseball bat while he waited for his mana to regenerate. His Strength wasn’t high enough to allow the baseball bat to one-shot the rats, but it was still pretty good. Not least of all because as he began smacking them rats, he earned himself another achievement.

Achievement Unlocked: Whack-a-mole 1
Kill small mammalian creatures with a blunt weapon.
+1 Strength

It was another one of those stackable achievements, meaning he’d be building Strength while farming for the xp. Gaia was really pushing for him to grow stronger. John wasn’t one to complain about her generosity. The question of why she was doing this could be dealt with later. Now was the time for whacking rats.